Post-communist States Research Articles

Еhe development of deliberative democracy and post-communist polish experience (some remarks)

The concepts of deliberative democracy, which emerged on a large scale in the 1980s, has become the subject of the scientific discussion on various fields. The flaws of representative democracy and the lack of legitimization of political systems led to the development of research on the improvement and modification of quality of democracy. Participatory democracy emphasized the broad participation of citizens in decision-making process, while deliberative (discursive) democracy indicated deliberation as essential, where political decisions should have been the product of fair and reasonable discussion and dialogue. The fall of communism and the elimination of some considerable threats connected with this kind of political regime brought the different attitude to the liberal democracies in post-communist states. Political changes in Poland in the late 80s and 90s of the 20th century led to the development of the new political regime. That process concerned the decentralization of powers, and consequently led to the creation of a new civil society, where local self-government was reintroduced by the reforms of public administration. The main institutions improving the development of the Polish civic society at the local level became local election, referendum, social consultations, civil (participatory) budget, and the possibility of civil participation in the debate on the report referring to the condition of the local administrative unit, and the civil legislative initiative.

Twenty Seven Years Later: Are There Post-Communist States?

Twenty Seven Years Later: Are There Post-Communist States?

ДЕЯКІ ПИТАННЯ МЕТОДОЛОГІЇ ІСТОРИКО-ПРАВОВИХ ДОСЛІДЖЕНЬ ІДЕЙНО-ТЕОРЕТИЧНИХ ЗАСАД РЕАЛІЗАЦІЇ ПРИНЦИПУ ПОДІЛУ ВЛАДИ НА ПРИКЛАДІ РЕСПУБЛІКИ ПОЛЬЩА

The article attempts to systematize the components of the methodology of historical and legal research, which should be applied in the research of the ideological and theoretical basis of implementation of the principle of separation of powers. Consideration of the components of the methodology of historical and legal research was carried out using the example of the Republic of Poland, which has a long history of origin, development and implementation of the idea of separation of powers and today, like Ukraine, is still in the period of its political and legal transformation from a post-communist state to a developed democratic state.

Anomalous Anglophones? Contours of free market ideology, political polarization, and climate change attitudes in English-speaking countries, Western European and post-Communist states

Recent scholarship has thoroughly documented climate change attitudes within the majority of the English-speaking countries of the USA, the UK, Canada, and Australia. In these nations, political identity is widely recognized as a uniquely powerful predictor of climate change attitudes and, at least in the USA, several studies have found that education moderates the effect of political identity. The cross-national dynamics of climate change attitudes and political identity are not well-characterized, particularly in nations with a history of state socialism. In this manuscript, we consider the role of political and free market ideological polarization around climate change within Anglophone, Western European, and post-Communist states. Further, we investigate education as a moderator of political and ideological factors cross-nationally. We suggest that, in comparison to Western European and post-Communist states, the role of political and ideological polarization in Anglophone states is exceptional in shaping climate change attitudes. Using data for 20 countries in the 2010 ISSP Environmental Module, we find that the effect of party affiliation and free market ideology on the perception of climate change’s danger and importance is strongest in Anglophone states, more modest in Western European countries, and limited within post-Communist states. Further, education moderates most intensely in Anglophone states. Our results suggest that there is something exceptional occurring within Anglophone states with regard to political polarization and climate change attitudes.

Embodied memories of geographical and social mobility: White-collar women in post-communist films about Romania

This article focuses on the ambivalent features of intellectual white-collar female characters in post-1989 films fully or partly produced in Romania ( The Oak, Fox-Hunter, The District, Sieranevada, Graduation and Toni Erdmann). Their ambivalence is examined in the framework of Pierre Bourdieu’s class habitus theory as interpreted by Tony Bennett and his colleagues, suggesting that the simultaneous presence of working-class, petit bourgeois and bourgeois/middle-class cultural capital types contributes to this effect. The performance of iconic actresses (from Maia Morgenstern to Sandra Hüller) is also situated within melodrama genre theory, a filmic template representing social mobility, often accompanied by travel. Finally, within the framework of mediated cultural remembrances the argument is made that these white-collar women may be incorporated into the category of ‘banal commemoration’ as developed by Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi, making it possible for Romanians to process traumatic memories of mobility engineered by the communist and post-communist states.

Democratization through education? Theory and practice of the Czech post-revolution education system and its reforms

The transformation process from an authoritarian/totalitarian system entails many institutional changes, however, the individual citizen is often being overlooked in this chaotic, fast-paced process and his or her “transformation” into a democrat is taken for granted. The changing socio-political system and its exigencies may lead to nostalgia and social frustrations, which in turn cause democratic backsliding. In order to cultivate a democratic society and avoid future backsliding, the post-communist states quickly set out to reform their educational systems, both in form and substance. By reviewing the reform process of the Czech educational system and discussing the prevailing legacies left by the communist regime, the article will show that through the “destruction” of the former system and its de-monopolization, decentralization and de-ideologization, the state deliberately lost significant means and power to transform Czechs from “homo sovieticus” to “homo democraticus” and is now left with a dependence on the highly autonomous schools and their propensity to foster democratic generations that will uphold the democratic state in the future. This paradox is reminiscent of the so-called Böckenförde dilemma, claiming that the liberal democratic state “lives by prerequisites which it cannot guarantee itself”.

Legal change in post-communist states: Contradictions and explanations. Introduction

Reformers had high hopes that the end of communism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union would lead to significant improvements in legal institutions and the role of law in public administration. However, the cumulative experience of 25 years of legal change since communism has been mixed, marked by achievements and failures, advances and moves backward. This special issue of the journal Communist and Post-Communist Studies documents the nuances of this process and starts the process of explaining them. This introductory essay draws on the findings of the articles in this issue to explore the impact of three potential explanatory factors: regime type, international influences, and legal (or political) culture. Regime type matters, but allows for considerable variation within authoritarian and democratic states alike and the possibility of reversals. The influence of international organizations (like the European Union) is also far from predictable, especially once states have joined the organization. Finally, legal cultures and political traditions play a large role in explaining developments in individual countries, but there is nothing inevitable about their impact.

Toward a Genealogy of the Balkan Discourses on Race

The ongoing racist reception of immigrants by post-communist states previously known to be class conscious, internationalist, and egalitarian naturally raises the question: how is racism possible in societies with no colonial or interracial experience? It is fair to state that the critical discourse on race barely exists and is historically and theoretically alien to postsocialist historiography on the grounds that Eastern Europe and the Balkans did not have and never were colonies. An attempt to engage the postsocialist presence with postcolonial analysis and to introduce race into the postsocialist context remains for the most part foreclosed by postsocialist historiographies. And yet every one of these postsocialist countries had racial laws during World War II and readily shipped Jews to concentration camps; as soon as real socialism collapsed, class consciousness morphed overnight into rabid nationalism coupled with racist practices. So, race must have always been – in some capacity – part of Eastern European, and particularly of Balkan, history. Informed primarily by Michel Foucault’s genealogy of race discourses, I will interrogate the ways in which the Balkans instrumentalized class and ethnicity as race in the struggle over sovereign space. This essay examines the Balkans “racial formations” in relation to war, revolution, the science of eugenics, the serology of “blood type,” procreation, and the Marxist discourse on race. Rather than a “thing” of nature, the Balkan “race” is a “thing” of discourse.

Political memory, ontological security, and Holocaust remembrance in post-communist Europe

ABSTRACTPost-communist states today are dealing with conflicting sources of ontological insecurity. They are anxious to be perceived as fully European by “core” European states, a status that remains fleeting. Being fully European, however, means sharing in the cosmopolitan European narratives of the twentieth century, perhaps the strongest being the narrative of the Holocaust. Influencing the European Union’s own memory politics and legislation in the process, post-communist states have attempted to resolve these insecurities by undergoing a radical revision of their respective Holocaust remembrance where the memory, symbols, and imagery of the Holocaust become appropriated to represent crimes of communism. By rejecting the cosmopolitan European narrative of the Holocaust, post-communist states have also removed anti-fascist resistance from the core memory of the Holocaust, allowing for a revival and ideological normalisation of contemporary fascist ideological movements. I illustrate the argument with an overview of contemporary Holocaust remembrance practices in the EU’s youngest member, Croatia.

The Role of the Social Model in Increasing Regional Competitiveness

The Role of the Social Model in Increasing Regional Competitiveness

Pokomunistinių valstybių socialiniai modeliai

Straipsnyje analizuojami pokomunistinių valstybių socialiniai modeliai. Pateikta socialinių modelių ir jiems būdingų bruožų analizė įrodo pokomunistinių valstybių socialinių modelių unikalumą, išskirtinumą ir pagrindžia atskiro, į tradicinę socialinių modelių tipologiją netelpančio, pokomunistinio socialinio modelio egzistavimo faktą. Atsižvelgiant į tai, straipsnyje pateikiama pokomunistinių valstybių socialinių modelių ištakų apžvalga, detaliai išanalizuotas transformacijos laikotarpis, taip pat pateikiama išsami pokomunistinių valstybių socialinių modelių analizė, išskiriant jiems būdingus bruožus, charakteristikas bei identifikuojant tarpusavio skirtumus.

Family Socialization, Trust and Change: Evidence from Russia

Abstract Social science debates about sources of generalized trust have prompted growing attention to how children develop faith in others. Much of the evidence, however, has come from relatively stable and prosperous societies. How might children’s trust differ in societies that have experienced rapid and destabilizing transitions, as in postcommunist states? Using new evidence on Russia from three waves of a survey between 2006 and 2014, the authors show that children’s trust is relatively low, reflecting low trust among parents, children’s sense of economic insecurity, and their doubts about the fairness of key institutions. But rising cohorts since the early 2000s display more trust than their parents and than their earlier counterparts. Thus old patterns of distrust do not necessarily persist intact.

Putting Brexit into perspective: the effect of the Eurozone and migration crises and Brexit on Euroscepticism in European states

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the link between recent EU crises and the development of party-based Euroscepticism across Europe. It draws on data from expert surveys with qualitative data to outline the way in which we can empirically see the link between the impacts of the crises in European states, and how far, and in what ways, Euroscepticism has been mobilized by political parties in those states. It identifies four main frames through which the EU is contested in European states which focus on: economic factors, immigration, democracy/sovereignty and national factors. It also shows that there has been a clear difference between the impacts of the different crises. While the Eurozone crisis had a particularly powerful effect in the party systems of those countries most affected by the bailout packages and the migration crisis had a particularly strong effect on party politics in the post-communist states of central Europe, Brexit has had a very limited impact on national party politics, although this may change in the longer-term.

Supporting community-based care and deinstitutionalisation of mental health services in Eastern Europe: good practices from Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In Eastern Europe, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation is supporting various post-communist states in reforming their mental health systems to ensure equal access to high-quality services in community-based settings. The approach and new care models introduced have proven successful in most of these countries, one of which is Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Inside the trade union family: The ‘two worlds’ within the European Trade Union Confederation

The enlargement of the EU in 2004 and 2007 to the post-communist states of Central and Eastern Europe brought an encounter between two distinct ‘trade union worlds’ in terms of attitudes towards European integration. Unions from the old EU Member States want to defend their existing national standards, while those from Central and Eastern Europe have nothing to defend and look for solutions at EU level. I ask whether it is possible for the European Trade Union Confederation to realize a trade union vision of ‘Social Europe’ based solely on the perspectives of the West.

The glory and demise of monetary nationalism in the post‐communist Baltic states

AbstractThis paper contributes to the body of research on the monetary variety of nationalism, which conceives of national currency as an essential element of nation state and national identity (‘one nation, one money’), exploring its contribution to the successful internal devaluation in the Baltic states during the economic crisis of 2008–2010. Contrary to the predictions of renowned experts in economics and finance, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were able to keep the peg of their national currencies to euro. Because of peculiar features of their histories (a brief period of independence with national currencies allegedly based on a gold standard, interrupted by prolonged Soviet occupation and the despised ‘wooden rouble’) monetary nationalism was very strong in the restored independent Baltic states. Monetary nationalism predisposed their indigenous populations to embrace the neoliberal model of capitalism and to accept the welfare cost of the defence of currency pegging during the crisis. Paradoxically, the success was self‐defeating, as it enabled the Baltic states to join Eurozone, abolishing national currencies. Theorizing about this case study of Baltic monetary nationalism, this paper closes with the interpretation of the rise and demise of national currencies as the reversal of the Weberian disenchantment process. Monetary nationalism (making money a core part of national identity) is a product of this reversal.

THE QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REFORMS IN POST-COMMUNIST COUNTRIES

In this article we describe the adoption and execution of public administration reforms in Central and Eastern Europe between 2008 and 2013, as well as examine whether post-communist countries differ from other groups of European countries in terms of the substance of reforms and their implementation process. Instead of following popular Western administrative theoretical frames, we adopt the policy process approach. We focus on the role of policy actors during reform policymaking and implementation at the level of policy subsystems. More specifically, we employ the rational-comprehensive and garbage can perspectives to understand the reform processes in the post-communist region. Our research is based on the statistical analysis of survey data and two case studies of reforms initiated by the 2008-2012 Lithuanian government. The article concludes that countries in Central and Eastern Europe share some common characteristics: they focused on the issues of civil service and public or administrative services, their reform policy was often formulated on a top-down basis, and its execution often lacked adequate capacities. Despite a rational reform façade in these countries, the implementation of governance change appears to be quite erratic, as anticipated in the garbage can perspective. This can have negative consequences on the effectiveness of public policy, continuing to generate public distrust in post-communist state institutions.

Institutional deficit and health outcomes in post-communist states

In this paper we draw upon the unique natural experiment of post-communist transitions to show how the interaction between democratization and economic liberalization impacts health. We argue that, if occurring simultaneously, these transformations reduce overall uncertainty and thus improve health. Two concrete mechanisms are at work: first, people suffer less from stress-related diseases, and second, they start investing more in their own health. To capture the proposed theoretical mechanisms, we use stress-caused mortality and private expenditures on health as our dependent variables. Empirically, we employ mediation analysis with country and time fixed effects. We find that, ceteris paribus, democratization and economic liberalization exert a cumulatively positive impact upon health. Our findings should be relevant to other countries that undergo politico-economic transitions.

ДЕМОКРАТИЯ И ДЕМОКРАТИЧЕСКИЙ ТРАНЗИТ В ИСТОРИЧЕСКОЙ РЕТРОСПЕКТИВЕ

The article is devoted to the study of a complex set of problems related to the ideas of democracy and practices of democratic transit in the mirror of Contemporary history. The author proceeds from the fact that the loss of geopolitical bipolarity has led to the intensification of efforts to form a new world order. Democracy has become its political form. At the same time, contemporary political development follows a variety of multidirectional trajectories. Democratization is not a normative, one-line and progressive process. The author tries to analyze such basic concepts as “democracy”, “good governance”, “human rights” in relation to the non-Western societies, and to develop an adequate methodology to study the ways of social and political development of modern States. He focuses on identifying the peculiarities of governance and the functioning of power, establishes the form of the interaction between the socio-cultural environment and the political institutions in post-Communist, post-colonial and post-totalitarian States. It is concluded that the 21st century will witness the struggle of democratic and anti-democratic trends not only on a global scale, but perhaps - in less dramatic forms - in the very citadels of traditional democracy.

Neoliberalism's World Order

Neoliberalism has many histories. Milton Friedman, the Chicago school, Pinochet, Thatcher and Reagan's market revolution, IMF structural adjustment, and shock therapy transition programs for the post-Communist states are all fixtures in the narrative of the neoliberal turn. If we wind the clock back to the aftermath of the Second World War, we can see various precursors already familiar to scholars. Globalists is important because it provides a new historical framing. For Slobodian, the earliest and most authentic brand of neoliberalism was defined by its preoccupation with the question of world economic integration and disintegration. Their advocacy for free trade and the liberalization of capital movement goes back to the wake of the First World War and the ruins of the Habsburg empire. Neoliberals set out not to demolish the state but to create an international order strong enough to contain the dangerous forces of democracy and encase the private economy in its own autonomous sphere.